 Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for North Central Minnesota, produced by Lakeland Public Television with host Ray Gildow. Production funding for Lakeland Currents is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airports, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport for information available at BemidjiAirport.org. Closed captioning for Lakeland Currents is sponsored by Niswa Tech Service, tax preparation for businesses and individuals online at NiswaTax.com. Hello again everyone and welcome to Lakeland Currents where we're starting our 11th year and still sponsored and underwritten by NiswaTax who has been with us through this whole period of time. I want to thank them very much. 11 years, I don't know where the time has gone, it's gone really fast. But it's great to be back on air again and as you probably know we shoot not only from the Brainerd Studio, studio, we also shoot from the Bemidji Studio where we do Lakeland Currents now with another host. So it's good to be back again and I'm going to start the show this year with one of my favorite topics which is fishing. I have Mark Bacigalupi who is here today who is the area fishery supervisor for the Brainerd Lakes area. And if you've been following fishing and if you've been following climate and how things are changing you know there's a lot of topics a lot of issues that are being talked about in the fishing business. So we can maybe clarify some of that today when we get into the depth of some of these discussions with Mark. Mark thanks again for coming on board and as we're just talking a little earlier you were first on this show when you started your job and I can't believe it's been seven years ago. Yeah time flies when you're having fun I guess. It's amazing that you've been on this job for seven years. Did you have your professors at college tell you that this job could be a very controversial one? Yeah you know we take a lot of math and statistics class and they were just starting to get into the human dimensions that's I think the word for it now for the controversy and ways of learning to work with folks on these tough issues. What is your general area that you supervise? Yeah so the Brainerd area the boundaries consist of Crowing County and lower cast you know how cast has the two chunks of it. We have lower cast and Gall Lake and Sylvan are a big piece of that and then some of the cricks that run into the that watershed but also just four townships this is an oddity four townships up in upper cast which are up towards outing so the Roosevelt Lake Washburn Lake Thunder Lake area four townships included there and then all of Crowing County so you know many many water bodies in Crowing County keeps us busy. That that really is a pretty large geographic area probably bigger than people think if they haven't driven from outing back down to here that's that's a pretty good stretch of water yeah and a lot of that is part of the Leech Lake area watershed is it not you know correct Pine River is a big chunk Pine River watershed is a big chunk of our area we have the Mississippi drainage there and also the Crowing River has a big chunk of our area too and the Leech Lake watershed is you know north of us a little bit but it's all all largely feeds into the Mississippi River which comes right through our alleyway here. Well could you just tell our viewers in general what what do fisheries people do how do you spend your typical year what is it that you're working on yeah well the backbone of our information system relies on lake surveys so in the in the spring and summer we in open water period we can get our hands on a lot of fish through our netting techniques and that is the way we gain our information to formulate our management plans our strategies through regulations or stocking or working with folks on special project habitat projects to to get the to get the things done that we can do to to make fishing as good as it can be on a given water body so we have hundreds of management plans in folders you know that we try and get to as much as we can and some of the bigger high profile lakes get a little more attention than some of the smaller smaller lakes and they get we don't get to those smaller lakes as often but you know there's 400 water bodies to get to really more like 100 of them that where we have management plans where we're trying to implement strategies so there's always plenty to do in the summer so we're gathering as much information as we can in the summer in the winter we're writing those reports thinking about proposals planning a budget and in trying to competitively grab little chunks of funding out there that we can do that we can grab to get some of these little projects done and that and so and then in the spring a big project is the is of course the Pine River walleye trap brainered area is one of the cornerstone areas for walleye production in the state and so we're we're getting the raw material walleye eggs for some of the walleye production that goes on statewide I know that there's been a lot of research being looked at now in the areas where we have invasive species and I think one of the misconceptions that a lot of people have is that Minnesota is pretty well overwhelmed with invasive species but in fact it's only about five percent of our lakes I believe that have been identified with aquatic invasive species issues the rest of them are still pretty pristine and pretty pretty healthy isn't that the case that is the case in terms of number Minnesota is blessed with so many water bodies you know it's it's always the land of 10,000 lakes it's something more like 11,000 or 12,000 but yeah percentage wise the number of infested lakes isn't that high people have argued that the lakes that are infested are large in terms of acreage and that is true and because that there are popular water bodies not just in terms of boating and recreation and fishing that goes on but also in terms of lake users or property owners and that is another avenue where these critters can get into our lake systems I know I've I've fished a lot of the area lakes for most of my life and I know Gall Lake has got zebra mussels Pelican lakes got zebra mussels North Long Lakes has zebra mussels bellagers were discovered last fall in Leech Lake and we know that malax has zebra mussels and it I always am kind of amazed at the critics of the DNR who so often are not scientists but there are probably a lot of times people like me who spend time on the water and that is such a complex environment down there underneath that water that is really hard to get a handle on what's going on isn't it I mean I'm in my view of course these zebra mussels clear up the water because they filter so much water are you starting to look at how is that changing the culture of the environment under there in terms of how are fish behaving it's a huge area where a lot of research could could be going on and we are DNR works with academic institutions and with Maze Arc on some of these very projects and these these have started and are getting underway they're starting to look at food webs if they're if the the dynamics of the food webs are changing with zebra mussels and and you mentioned the clearing water I think that's one of the major issues with zebra mussels is the fact that they not so much that that's changing the energy flow but the clearing water is really going to be something that affects what people are seeing out there plants will grow in deeper areas it could affect the way the lake warms so the water temperature regimes out there so fish are going to do different things in clear water than what they were doing before and and it's not all very it's very difficult to predict what's going to happen and I think it's good for people to know that the research that you folks do on the lakes is available on your website so if you want to look at what are the creel surveys showing for example on gall lake how many how many fish are stocking in the area that information is all available to the public how do they how do they get to that yep um you know google the google search engine is good um within our website you have a search abilities and and like you say all our information available I think that's one of the strengths of of doing this public work with it with an agency um and uh you know just the good old fashioned telephone call to the info line will get you to the researcher or the the fisheries biologist that you're looking for to ask those questions and they they make themselves available sometimes it takes a couple days to to get that phone tag down but uh it's all out there I know uh in the last three or four years there's a lot of criticism that gall lake doesn't have the walleyes in it anymore that it used to have and I think uh the last two years has proven that most of the people who said that were wrong because those walleyes were there and they're beautiful fish 18 19 last year there were a lot of 19 inch fish 19 inch fish that came out of that lake it seems to me that they are spending more time in the summer into the vegetation maybe than they used to and used to be like we could go in the middle of august the end of august and find a lot of walleyes and 12 to 14 feet of water with that cleaner clear water I shouldn't say cleaner but clear water they seem to be moving deeper a little earlier and they're in different spots so it must be just about impossible to to tell people exactly how they're behaving down there with this changing environment isn't it yeah and we never could before you know we we would know where they are in relation to our nets you as fishermen probably always had a better handle of what they were doing but you know this is a recurring thing throughout the state you can you can go through the newspapers and find several examples of you know our our netting statistics are saying one thing and fishermen are are seeing and and thinking another and it's just that you know fishing adds information it does but it isn't as reliable as our netting in in some ways because our nets can can catch fish that fishermen are not catching that's really the gist of it because our nets are very effective and we and they're effective by design because we have to get our hands on as many fish as we can in a short period of time to do survey we survey work around the state fairly efficiently so there's always those conflict conflicting pieces of information but uh creel information is really important and it's uh what a creel is basically just getting angler information of how long they fished and what their catch rates were and what they kept so angler and harvest rate rate information is is expensive to come by and it's it's just chronically underfunded and uh it's just one of the challenges we face because that is the bottom line is what people are are catching and uh how you know in how satisfaction how satisfied they're going to be with their angling trip that is the bottom line but we're also looking at what the baseline populations are out there to create the conditions that can can produce good fishing at times maybe you could talk just a little bit about and i i don't mean to focus just on the lakes and brainer here but uh you are going to do some research on um smaller fish in gall lake and the thing that it's been amazing to me is the last two years i've caught jumbo perch on gall lake 12 and 13 inch perch and i can't remember catching as many as we have been the last few years it seems like that perch population's pretty healthy and that's one of the areas you're going to do some research isn't it yeah i i think it's showing some promise that um traditionally we've looked at perch uh well our our standard nets catch perch that are larger five and a half inches and bigger and those fish are already sexually mature so we're not we're we're just getting a snapshot of a segment of the population i think we're a little bit blinded to what a really important part of the perch population is are the young of the year the age ones age twos these are small fish under four inches and we really don't have a good feel for what those abundances are and how they can be affecting fishing um the the obvious thing is that when there's a lot of them out there the the fishing can be slower sure but that is overall a good thing and it's basically the foundation of a walleye fishery is having a good perch forage base so um that's something that we're just we're just starting on and just it's a little project in the brainard area maybe it'll expand and be something that other areas can do and will you know like anything um the more types of lakes you can study and have similar types of studies on the better your information is so we're we're really on the starting line there but there's a there's a larger issue statewide is is that um there is kind of a trend in in lower perch numbers in our in our standard nets and that's a concern because of their importance in the in the food chain i i know leech lake numbers were down probably the most since the 30s in talking with Doug Schultz last year that they're the the numbers are coming up on Winnie which is good to see and the size is coming back a little bit but so that'll be interesting to see what that research shows you mentioned kind of the cycle on on gall lake uh we've the research does shows that these perch populations cycle a little bit but overall they're cycling down in in a lot of cases and we want to figure out why figure out what we can yeah how big a staff do you have for the service area that you have to take care of yeah i have a staff of six we're probably uh a little better staff than average reiner is such a popular area with large number of water bodies but it's a little bit just about through attrition if right now in our in our agency if somebody leaves we're not filling that position very quickly to to gain what we can through salary savings and so some areas have are you know started with an office of five or four and if they have a vacancy they're they're they're down to three you know in some cases and that's a lot of geographic area to cover with yep you break the state up into 28 area fisheries office it's brainered as one of them you know you do the math on is 87 counties um divided by 28 and so each each area office has two or three or four counties to cover and so that's with the water rich area we have that's tough for three or four or five people let's just talk a little bit about walleye stocking and then maybe musky stocking uh i i read that recently there's been a a reevaluation of how the stocking is being done across minnesota because you're finding that some areas where you're stocking it hasn't been very effective could you just talk a little bit about that yeah it's all related together we're talking about budgets and staff and efficiencies we have to be you know efficient government is a good thing we have to be as efficient as we can all the time so we again we go back to these baseline surveys and how they're the key information pieces and in our decision making so if these surveys are showing that over um 10 15 20 years that increased stocking levels haven't been resulting in higher catch rates then we really have to question if that's worth the money fingerlings are very expensive if we're just to go to a private grower and buy them they're 18 to 20 a pound and that's about one dollar per walleye and a lake a stocking rate for a lake would be a pound of fish per literal acre so some some bigger lakes have a thousand literal acres a thousand pounds of fish need to go in there um that's that's uh 20 thousand dollars that's pretty expensive so or no 200 thousand dollars that's pretty expensive very yeah and then um you're also started stocking muskies last year in gall lake and you've stocked some i think the year it was a year before in roosevelt up and by outing could you just talk a little bit about that sure roosevelt lake started uh we we got uh a new roosevelt lake as a new musky lake in 2011 it started that long ago yep and uh it does take eight to ten years to get a musky fishery going to have enough larger mature individuals where it's worth it to go over there and fish roosevelt lakes just starting to come on now as a place where people can go and see a few fish get some follows get some mid 40 inch fish and i've had i've heard good reports of you know people having a good time it's worth their while to go over there right now so that's seven eight years into the game there um gall lake was just started as a musky fishery and that was in in the news quite a bit i'm sure as as people are aware um just started in 2016 and so it'll be uh you know seven eight nine years until people are going to start showing up and fishing for these muskies that are going to start to get into the 40 inch range now we were electro fishing this fall it was this was interesting we did catch a musky that's from 2016 in gall lake in september and it was 20 inches long oh my gosh it was uh it was an impressive growth rate because i guess they go in as 11 inches so typically so it almost doubled its length in one year so it's a good sign for uh for the the conditions are good for some of the muskies that are now will you stock any more muskies in gall lake it's on an every other year stock plan that's in our management plan it's a strategy that's shown to have worked um and be relatively efficient um statewide and not in the 40 other some stock musky lakes it it's amazing to me how emotional of an issue that is especially to lake shore owners um who feel that muskies are going to wipe out the walleye populations i can remember um a couple of their lakes that have been stocked over the years and it never seemed to be the issue that people thought it was and i think gall still has a pretty good sysco base doesn't it it's a good sysco base in in uh in gall it fits all the biological characteristics with it we have a really good track record of tracking um the 40 some musky lakes that we've where we've introduced muskies and we've really seen that the fisheries are not hurt by that you've added a musky fishery but you really haven't taken away from the other species and that's because the musky is such a low density predator there's only one every three or four or five acres wow um and so you know they they have a large presence when you when it shows up but uh ecologically it's it's not um taking up a lot of space well what are what are some of the new initiatives that you've got going on well we always have a a lot of things going on in the brainard area one of the things i'm pretty excited about is that we were able to get four new aquatic management areas this year you know i you mentioned i've been here seven years we we hadn't had any in the first seven years and then you know how things go just uh things happen to go right and we have four new ones in the air that that opens up a little piece of state land it's like a wildlife management area the the first goal of an aquatic management area is to protect near shore habitat and and they're geared towards uh lake frontage so you're protecting um lake frontage in an undisturbed way but it's also if you have a 30 or 40 plus acre piece of land that someone could go sit in a bow stand and or hike or cross country ski in the winter so that's uh but it always has some water on it i would assume yeah the aquatic management areas are geared towards either a river or a creek or a or a lake okay so you have four of those and are they all in crowing county or they're they're spread around there was one up in the northern part of crowing county in the cast there's one in the center and then one over towards pelican lake it's you know like i said it's just kind of been how the cookies fell this this time around but we're happy to be trying to add opportunities in the brainard area for different recreation for folks to come here and visit and have a good time um you know on that vein one of the things that has gotten positive reviews as opening up winter fishing winter trout fishing opportunity in the uh cayuna country state recreation area that's been a hit you know the the mountain bikers have been really going over there and and doing that and some people have been really finding a good combination of fishing and mountain biking when they come to visit this area and and winter fishing which which was closed for many years um for trout right for trout or any fishing um on the mine pits is now opened so you've got to be careful on that ice because those deep water lakes have thinner ice than than your other typical lakes but once that ice formation is good um in the trout season as a play you can fish for all species on you know there happen to be some large northern pike in those um some of those mine what are the kinds of trout that you're targeting there that people would be targeting well we're mostly uh stocking rainbow trout in these systems and it's a put and put and take system you know it's a very popular thing after in open water in may um for for people to do and um but we're also getting some of our ser sometimes we get some surplus production put a few extra fish in there for the winter fishery um there are some brook trout available to people and there's one pit even that has lake trout and that's really popular in the winter because those lakers don't seem to necessarily bite in the summer but they will bite in the winter okay isn't that interesting it's similar to trout lake we find the trout lake isn't real good in the summer but they do definitely bite in the winter time that's right yeah yeah it's so trout fishing in the canyona country stator has been really popular we've had positive reviews probably sold some trout stamps that way too um so when you look at the area lakes like in the brand area pelican north long gall lake um do you see the fishing is still about what it's been historically when you're or I should say when you're doing your netting when you go in and do your server are those lakes pretty well holding true to what the historic levels have been you know pelican has been one where it's been on the downside a little bit we're working really hard on pelican to get it back to where it's been and we're working really hard with the lake association um cooperatively um but you know looking at long-term trends white fish chain is as good as it's ever been it is gall um you know while the numbers are down the fishing has been good we're working on gall really hard um north long has been uh really good fishing um so we haven't heard complaints over there and the population looks strong so yeah the big lakes in the brain area are doing pretty well um and we're we're watching them as close as ever knowing that uh it's a big draw to the area you know um we're talking about climate change and there's no question that climate is a is changing here uh the water temperatures this year were pretty normal though weren't they we didn't get that it seemed like if you went from Minneapolis south it was really hot this area seemed to stay I think we only had four or five days in the 90s water temperatures didn't get too bad did they yeah the water temps were low I think water clarity is ends up being pretty high because of that it does uh it doesn't seem like there's a normal year anymore weather wise really um so it's really hard to to remember what what normal used to be anymore yeah um but yeah it certainly affects fishing um it's been a little bit of an odd you know in and out year for fishing but now do you the populations are there do you still have hearing sessions during the course of the year in the area for just getting input from people yeah well do that yeah I mean I like to say every day is a public input meaning for me because you can people call and email at all times and that's fine that's that's a good way and it's a good way to ask for information really keeping the open lines of communications with associations and the civic groups are is really an important thing um recently we had a public meeting for Moody Lake to open that up to catch and release fishing which is it was a you know it was in the paper it's just a tiny little blurb but that's one of the examples that I was trying to mention about opening up some opportunities that lake was close to fishing it was kind of an experimental lake within the Moody Lake aquatic management area so that public input has been so far positive I just think that is a great idea to have catching catching release lakes like Hubert for bass someone like me I can take grandkids over there who want to learn how to fish or people who don't really come from the area don't want to keep fish it's so nice to have a lake like that where you can go in and the populations are good and you can catch and release them and that's a great thing it really is the the power the value of recycling these fish you know catching and releasing and someone else having an opportunity to catch again has really been uh it's been a powerful thing that people have opened their eyes to with the with bass fishing leading the way with the catch and release ethic uh musky fishermen are really doing that now or even even a legal fish over 54 inches that they could keep there they want to see go back in the water for someone else to catch and that's uh that's something we need to see because there's just there's more and more people out there there's not going to be less and uh so the slice of the pie is going to be thinner for everyone if we want to you know we we can't grow we can't have more in a large sense we can't have more than our carrying capacity of fish so it's just going to be dividing the pie up a little bit everybody wants more fish but they don't realize that you have to have a biomass to support all that yeah great well thanks for being on the show appreciate it thanks for having me again you've been watching Lakeland Currents where we're talking about what you're talking about. I'm Ray Gildow so long until next day.